Mariah Carey performing at the Billboard Music Awards in 2023

Every year, there is one Christmas song that provokes a very distinct reaction in pretty much anyone who hears.

The moment the 13-note twinkling intro of Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You begins, it signals the moment the office party properly goes off.

Whatever it is that makes a Christmas song truly universal, this 1994 release has it. And then some.

So, more than 30 years after its release, here are 24 things you didn’t know about The Greatest Christmas Song Of All Time...

Mariah Carey launching her Christmas album in New York in 1994.

1. Mariah Carey wrote All I Want For Christmas Is You in super-quick time

It only took Mariah and her co-writer Walter Afanasieff 15 minutes to come up with the chords, structure and melody of the song. Frankly, it’s taken us longer to order a pizza.

2. Mariah Carey’s family inspired some of the lyrics to All I Want For Christmas Is You... though not in an especially flattering way

The inspiration for the lyrics to All I Want For Christmas Is You came from Mariah’s own not-so-great experiences of Christmases past, growing up without much money.

“I did have to sit back and go, ‘What do I really want to write about Christmas?’,” she revealed in an interview with Genius. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna write from the place of that kid that didn’t grow up with any money, that always wanted to have the most festive Christmas. And somehow people I was related to would come in and ruin the holiday every year’.”

3. Mariah Carey’s co-writer had major reservations about All I Want For Christmas Is You at first

Walter Afanasieff with one of his many Grammys

Co-writer Walter Afanasieff admits he wasn’t a fan of song at first.

“At the time, I thought it was overly simple, and I really didn’t like it,” he told the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 2014.

The oversimplified melody, I guess, that made it so easily palatable for the whole world to go ‘Oh, I can’t get that out of my head’.”

4. He also wasn’t a fan of Mariah Carey’s vocal delivery

The melody that Mariah came up with also faced some resistance from her co-writer, Walter Afanasieff.

“My first reaction was, ‘That sounds like someone doing voice........

© HuffPost